 Gwyd morning, and welcome to the 31st meeting of the economy jobs and fair work committee. May I remind all those in the public alleyway to turn their devices to silent if they are not already? First of all, we have apologies from committee member Gordon MacDonald and also from committee member Colin Beattie, and may I welcome Daniel Johnson as a new member of the committee and invite him at this stage to make any declaration of relevant interest, that he may have Ysafodd dd будуig yma'n gwybod gychwyn gyntafol i ddim yn fwy gan scoldedio, a fyddai'n gwybod yn y cyfle cyfan i ddim yn ei ddweud, mewn cyflosfawr ynfermwr i'r hwnnw y mae'n dweud i'r pryddydd yn y cyfle cyfan i ddweud i ddweud i'r peth yn gyfsigio, i siŵr i'r cweinio ffadol, i ddim yn yn 5, 6, 7, ac i ddim yn gweithio, i ddim yn ddiwrnoddol ac i dwi'n gwneud eich ddaith o'r ffordd o broth cyfrelfol yn cynnol iawn, ac i ddweud and consideration of a draft report on the Scottish Government's draft budget 2018-19 should be taken in private at future meetings? Is the committee agreed with that? Yes. Thank you. Now this morning we move to now to our evidence session in which we are looking at draft budget scrutiny of the budget 2018-19 and Scotland's economic performance. We had had two witnesses down to appear before the committee today but in the event it is one witness, Linda Scott, who is chief executive officer at West Lothian Chamber of Commerce. Welcome to you, Linda Scott. Thank you very much for coming in today. In light of the change in witnesses, we'll simply be doing this as a single session covering a number of issues that are relevant to your area of operations, your remit. I would like to move to that session now. The sound desk will control the mic for everyone. If anyone wishes to come in as a committee member, please simply indicate by raising their hand. I would like to start first of all with a question from committee member, Alec Neill. Thank you very much indeed, convener. Good morning. There are two broad areas that I would like to explore. One is the specific issue of account management and the effectiveness of account management by Scottish Enterprise of companies. Once we explore that, we look at where tomorrow's jobs and industry are going to come from at both a local level as well as how that feeds into the national strategies at the Scottish and UK level. In terms of account management, and I should declare an interest in that many years ago long before I came in here, I was an economic consultant and involved in the design of account management systems for both Highlands and Islands Enterprise and Scottish Enterprise, but that was a long time ago. We are now well into the 21st century, so my first question is, are account management programmes by Scottish Enterprise effective? Are they adding value? Can we clearly identify new jobs and industry that would not have happened without the account management system? Firstly, thank you for having me here this morning. To gather a little bit of information, before I came here I put out a survey and questionnaire to several companies in our area, small and large. The information that came back was varied. In general, the larger companies came back and said that account management was really, really good for business and proactive, and they felt that there had been a big improvement in that service in the last five years. One very large multinational in particular said now that they are more sector-specific and that the managers are, for a specific area, working a lot better. I would say that the larger companies, that are already quite secure companies, find the service very, very useful and very productive and very good for investing in the future. The small SME-type market, the middle sort of bracket market, on the other hand, find it much harder work to work with account management. It is difficult to qualify, they find it quite cumbersome, a little bit, I would say, outdated and old-fashioned kind of process. Those newer companies that are coming in need to work a much faster, slicker process. I heard from one CEO that runs quite a large company that had said that the way companies work these days, the newer companies, the millennial-type companies, are looking at 100-day turnaround, and a lot of the process at the moment with account management is quite a long, slow process. So what would they like instead of the current account management system? How can they be best helped? The general basis of this is that the service is needed and required. There may be a bit of an add-on beforehand. A more business-to-business approach would be an asset, something that is not quite so tied in with the red tape of the agencies that would help in a faster, getting them ready to get to be account managed. A lot of companies need to be got ready to get account managed, so there seems to be a bit to before that account managed needs to step in. I am certainly dealing with a fairly large company, still technically an SME, in my own constituency. Last year, they applied for regional selective assistance, and they were an account managed company. It has taken them eight months to get a response on their application. They just think that, in this day and age, that should be dealt with far, far quicker than that. Even if the answer is no, at least tell us up front, the answer is no. A system that has been running for many years, why does it take eight months to get a response? That is the type of feedback that we are getting from companies of all sizes. It is the length of time for decision. We had an engineering company that was looking for support to buy new machinery, and that is exactly what they had to walk away eventually, because it took too long to even, as you say, get an initial response, whether it is going to be a yes or no, which was a yes, but by which point they had to go ahead and buy the machinery. It took too long to get a response. Speed is much more speed in decisions, and slicker processes are more up-to-date with the 21st century processes. RSA is an area that needs to be investigated. I personally think that we are losing jobs and investment in Scotland because the RSA process is so bureaucratic, time consuming, and it is so debilised at times. Obviously, that is your experience as well. It might be something for the committee to pursue further. As I said, the larger companies are not finding it so, but they have probably got the time and resources in-house to take time to look at it, but that is the general feeling that we have been getting from the companies that we speak to. With the larger companies, one of the advantages originally of the count management system was intended to be a lot of those multinational companies. Scottish management or sometimes UK management are fighting against their colleagues in other countries to secure new investment, new plant. If they have the account management system, it can ensure that the support of Scottish Enterprise and, if required, the Scottish Government can hopefully become much more heavily involved to entice the company to favour Scotland in terms of locational decisions. Is that the kind of advantage that the larger companies see or what are the advantages that they see in the account management system? Yes, that is. One of the large companies that I spoke to, that is exactly something that they see as an asset, because it is a large multinational company and they do actually compete in-house to a degree to go after Pacific Bids, so any sort of support on that front does help them winning contracts. The other thing is from the Government's point of view and Scottish Enterprise's point of view, if there is a potential threat to the existing investment in jobs, the account managers should be the early warning system to try and pre-empt that as much as they possibly can, sometimes they can. Is that working from a big company point of view? I would say that that is working, yes, in the area. There has been also areas where it has maybe been missed, companies that have maybe gone into liquidation in that area. You felt that science should have been spotted sooner. Something down to the quality of the account manager. The quality of the account manager isn't very important. Basically, the main issue to be addressed is the lack of sufficient support for SMEs and the bureaucracy around things like RSA. It wouldn't just be RSA, there would be undigrants and stuff as well that are problematic. As you touched on there, again it has come from members in our area, the quality of the agent is very important as well. There are certain sectors that have the experts, some sectors are not quite such, the expertise is not quite as good, and then that's where it falls down. The service that launch companies would pay something for, or do they expect it to be free? They might expect it to be free, that would be a question you need to ask then. I do feel that I also head up developing a workforce in that area for West Lowry, so we do a lot of work with the big companies in that area now. I would say that the interest in being more involved themselves and investing in what they're doing has changed drastically in the last sort of a year and a half to two years, because it's sort of a change in their sort of thinking that the way they need to get involved and that is something that I think could filter through to many other aspects of their work. Just that there's evidence from past programmes that shows if a company has to make a contribution to the cost of providing advice and consultancy support and the like, they're much more likely to value that and to make more demands on it, but to get greater results. Yes, exactly. Whereas if they get it free, it's neither here nor there. I think it varies, it depends on the project and what they're being asked to do. If it's an investment to improve productivity, I'd say in certain areas they would invest. Can I move to the broader question, because it seems to me that the fundamental challenge facing us all, given the forecasts from the likes of the Bank of England and the US Fed and so on, about the very high percentage of jobs that are going to disappear over the next 20 years or so because of artificial intelligence and robotics. Is the answer to the question, where are tomorrow's jobs going to come from? Can I ask, and I realise obviously we're talking about West Lothian here, but I think this is an issue that needs to be addressed at local as well as national level. Is there any work being done either by the chamber or by local businesses or by the local authority or other bodies at a West Lothian level, either to try to answer that question at a local level or input to the national conversation at the Scottish or UK level? Obviously we had the industrial strategy from the UK Government published yesterday, and it's broadly along the same lines as the Scottish Government strategy. They're not in any way as far as I can see contradictory, but I wonder how much that permeates, that thinking permeates down to local level. Good question. It is something that has started to be talked about, but I'm not aware of anything in particular that's been done or any processes in place to look into it in the future, but it is something that I've noticed has been talked about more even in the last six months than it's ever been talked about, but I'm not aware of anything in particular that's going on. So would it be worthwhile, for example, at a local level, given the Bank of England forecast and others, looking at West Lothian in relative terms as a fairly advanced local economy, obviously the interaction with Edinburgh is important as well, but is it worthwhile at a local level trying to identify the jobs that are likely to be lost and the many jobs will need to be replaced over the next 10 to 15 years in as much as any forecasting can be accurate, but it's just got a sense of magnitude. I certainly think that we would. Actually, just thinking there on hindsight, it is actually something that we've talked about at our developing young workforce board, sorry if I forgot, particularly on the back of the city deal, actually looking at what the jobs of the future are going to be in our area over the next 10 years and then our focus being on that to work with schools and colleges for our young people coming through. So it is something that's been touched on, so at our developing young workforce level, it's something that potentially could be looked at into more detail. I think that Daniel Johnson had a short follow-up on that. I'm just interested in what you're saying in terms of the difference of experience between large companies and SMEs. I think that one of the key challenges in the economy is about growing, turning the Ss into Ms and then onwards. Do you accept that premise and what things would you like to see Scottish Enterprise do differently if they were to be more focused on that challenge? What would I like to see them do? I certainly, from the feedback I've been getting from businesses, is that they feel that the smaller SME market is feel that they are being neglected and you have to be a big company to qualify and get assets. I think that looking at them in the first place would be a good step, but I think that the processes that are in place just now would be too time-consuming and cumbersome for them to be involved. I did have a conversation with somebody from Governments a few months ago that there is that gap even between Business Gateway and Scottish Enterprise at the moment. It's all very well to go into somewhere and say that you need to write a business plan. Probably eight out of ten wouldn't know how to write a business plan or really have a requirement for a business plan. I was at a conference in London last week and this was talked about from very large companies. There was a company, I won't mention the name, it turns out that they were £40 million. They don't have a business plan, but it's a millennial-type business that's worth going at a very fast rate. It doesn't require the same set-up, as we've gone back to the old-fashioned way of setting up a business. There is that gap, what it is and what it exactly looks like. I wouldn't be able to tell you here today. I would like to look into it and see what it is, but there is definitely something missing a gap there for the smaller markets and the fast-moving markets of today. What regular feedback do you get from your members about the services that they receive from Scottish Enterprise or, in fact, business gateways? Is that something that you routinely seeking? It is something that we routinely do, but I have to say that when I put out this email to our members asking them for feedback for today, I was really impressed and surprised with the feedback that I got. As I said, it was very varied, quite 50-50. I would say actually good and bad. We actually said as a board that we would start doing this on a regular basis to get feedback. Again, I head up in our area of international bid, where we work on that side of things. Since we've got that bid money and working in closer partnership with the likes of SDI, it has made a big difference to the awareness of their presence in our area. I would say something like this that we would like to follow through in the same type of... Are you aware that Scottish Enterprise does any surveys of the kind of businesses that are members of yours? No, they don't do anything through us. They don't do anything directly through you? No. No. I mean, what confidence do you have in Scottish Enterprise's intelligence about what's going on at the coalfaces that we are amongst ordinary businesses operating in the country? At the ordinary businesses, I think that their focus in our area is of the large multinational companies and not so much the, as I'm saying, the smaller SME market I wouldn't... I would like to see them more engaged with at the chambers, so come, you know, along to see what we're doing, meet our members. I would say probably the majority of our members would not have had any contact with them. Because that leads me on to the... I think it was the Heseltown review. A few years ago, I've suggested that, in comparison with other countries, businesses are not that well integrated into mainstream policy making, on-going issues. No one's suggesting that they have any executive authority or anything like that, but the kind of model whereby they're consulted or not irregularly and feel somewhat at a distance from the machinery of government, whether central or local, is something that he picked up. Is that something you recognise? Yes, I definitely recognise that. I think that there would be a huge appetite for business in our area to be more involved whenever we've had the opportunity to host something like that, or when the committee came to our area. It wasn't difficult to find businesses to be engaged in that, and I know in the future we would fill a room if they were to get regular access to speak to people within government and agencies. In general terms, what's the business environment been like in Westlothian over the last 10 years? A varied, again. We've had some good stories and some really, really bad stories. In general, we only hear about the bad news, the big closures, but as one big company closes, there are several new ones open. Westlothian is definitely one of the fastest growing areas in Scotland at the moment. On a personal view, we had a lot of empty buildings for many years, and I know that several of them are full now. It's not easy to find premises in Westlothian Livingston now, and especially not on the warehouse side of things. At one point, we had trouble with a couple of companies looking for expansion to find more space, so there is growth in the area and activity, and all sorts. We have a very varied area. If you name a business, you'll find it in Westlothian somewhere. In terms of the broader economic climate, employment, interest rates, productivity and all the rest of it, what's the experience of your members? Unemployment is very low, so recruiting is very difficult. A lot of companies are growing at a very fast pace and they struggle to recruit, so recruitment would be our biggest issue in our area because there's just not the workforce there to fill the jobs. Why is that? Well, the volume of the companies, there's a lot of manufacturing companies, there are a large volume staff there, plus we can lose talent to the likes of Edinburgh and Glasgow, so it's keeping them in-house. We have a lot of large companies with their headquarters in Westlothian, so we need some of the best talent there to stay, but they're still leaving and going to Glasgow and Edinburgh, but again just the sheer volume of the workforce that's required in the area. I'm interested to hear your point, Mr Scott, regarding losing talent to Glasgow and Edinburgh. I'm an MSP for covering Renfisher and East Renfisher, so having Glasgow right on our doorstep is a huge magnet, but it also presents opportunities, and I certainly know in the United States, big cities of surrounding areas and the values of capitalise upon in these cities. What particular opportunities and challenges do you think are presented for, for example, for Westlothian with the proximity to both Edinburgh and indeed Glasgow? Indeed, do you think that there's enough tailored support that takes cognisance of those challenges? Can you ask that question again and sort of break it down into bits? It's simply because you've got a very unique set of challenges, often when we think about unique set of challenges for businesses in Scotland, we may think of rarely this example of the Highlands and Islands, but for yourself you have a proximity of Edinburgh and Glasgow and it's struggling to recruit people losing talent to these big cities. Do you feel there's enough tailored support available from agencies such as Scottish Enterprise to enable you to retain talent and to support businesses in that particular environment? I would say that the support to retain talent and focus on it more is improving, particularly over the last couple of years. Again, I keep harping back on to see it as a huge success as they're developing a workforce. The targets have gone through the roof with that, and raising awareness of the actual companies in the area—again, one of our largest companies in the area—has every job from cleaners to accountants to sales, but from the outside, people have a perception of what they are and who they do, so just general raising awareness of the actual jobs that they have in there has made a huge difference. It needs to be something that's done within school and bringing our future workforce through. When they're not aware of what's there, they just don't know what's involved, so their thought process is, you know, if I need to work for a good law firm, I need to go to Edinburgh because is there even one in Westlothian? So just a lot more awareness. So I'd say that the developing of a workforce has done that, but that could be expanded into more. As I've spoken to DWP, the developing of a workforce is working so well. There's now gaps now with your middle market and your ageing workforce that we need to focus on them and raise awareness within those groups. Thank you, and come on now to Gillian Martin. Thank you, convener. Welcome to the committee, Linda. I have to say that I very much enjoyed our visit with you a couple of months ago. We know that internationalisation is a challenge for Scottish businesses. I want to ask you about the local export partnerships. I believe that Westlothian are involved with that. Can you give me an overview of what that is and how that is working so far? I know that it's very early stages. Yes, it's very early stages, but we have been working on something similar over the last most of this year, to be honest. I see it as an awareness raising, if you like. We did some research at the beginning of this year, and we really struggled to get companies to respond, even to tell us if they were exporting or where they were exporting to. The outcome that we had to get from that research was that the appetite is just not there at the moment around us of all the uncertainty and things that are going on. The idea of the local enterprise partnership is to raise awareness and work more collaboratively together to help to support and encourage companies into the world of export. Is the idea to have partnership working with companies who are already exporting to share that information and that knowledge about how to tap into overseas markets? Our initial thought process would be to try to encourage the businesses that hadn't thought about exporting, but since we have started holding events and raising awareness and we in Westland have launched our international club, it's companies that have never exported before and companies are exporting and are looking to move into new markets. There's even companies that are coming to us for support and advice that are exporting in five or six countries. They're not first timers, if you like, but they know that the chamber process just now is more our sort of B2B connections with all the other chambers across the network and in different chambers across the world. It's been quite well publicised, so we've had a lot of interest asking if we can help to get into certain countries. One of the things that I want to ask you about and forgive me if you can't answer this and I know I'm becoming from left field, but I was at university last night up in my area in Aberdeen, the Robert Gordon University, and they were saying that they have got links throughout the world. I was asking them about how they're working with businesses in order to maximise business input to those links and there's an opportunity there to be working with education who've got links all over the world. Is Westlothian doing any of that kind of work with education providers? Yes, it's just starting. We haven't in the past, to be honest. I mean, we've got a very strong partnership with Westlothian College. They wouldn't probably be too directly involved in export, but one of our local universities has actually approached us on that side of things. I was over in Ireland last month and we've signed an MOU with South Dublin Chamber to work on encouraging companies to export to Ireland and I was approached from one of their large colleges there to look at partnership working. Since they're aware of what we are doing, they are starting to come and approach us. By next summer, there would be a few formal relationships set up. That's really encouraging to hear. I was asking you about internationalisation in general. Do you think that there's more scope for the Government or STI to do more to help chambers in that regard and by local businesses as a result of that? I certainly do, yes. I have to say that moving in the world of internationalisation in Westlothian is new to us and I'm even pleasantly surprised myself with the interests that we have got since saying that we are being involved in this market. I see wholeheartedly that there's a place for STI and SC in that. They are the experts, but we still have a place to bring them to the table to signpost them to write partners in support. Even when they are working with STI and SC, sometimes they need external support to help them through that process. I feel that that's where the chambers can come in. I also feel that the companies that are approaching me specifically for Ireland are not new exporters, but they are keen to be supported by the chamber because they know that they have got B2B links on the ground rather than just another agency. B2B links are so essential for them and I think that's where the chamber network comes in. Effectively, just off the back of Alex Neil's question, there seems to be again a little bit of a gap in the SMEs where business start-ups are catered for very high-end, large businesses are catered for in terms of internationalisation at that end, but the SMEs that make up the bulk of the Scottish economy are maybe needing to be tapped into a lot more in terms of internationalisation. They need to be tapped into and business likes to do business with business. They understand the phrases, the chat, what goes on behind closed doors in a business. Those types of companies need that type of support and the type of support that they get from STI and SC can be off-putting to them at the start. As I said, I think that their support is essential, but they might need that business-to-business support to get them into that process in the first place. I think that's where the gap is. I know that some of my colleagues want to follow up on that. Daniel Johnson I'd like to ask you a question about business gateway and it relates to your answer to my previous supplementary question. One of the key things that happened in 2007 was business gateway got separated from Scottish Enterprise. How well does business gateway work in and of itself for your members and how does its links with Scottish Enterprise work and are they effective? Business gateway has its good points and it's not so good points. Again, it comes down to the agent and the person that you go to see. I think that we need a lot more experts in business gateway. Again, you want to sit in front of somebody who's had a business and talk to you and find the agents that we speak to a lot of times who are not experienced in the world of business, and that can be a downfall and put people off. Again, a little bit too much, bureaucracy goes on. My own experience is that they are quite quick to pass to Scottish Enterprise, which is good, but I think that the service that you get is of a better quality once you get to Scottish Enterprise. My personal experience of business gateway was that they were very geared up for people starting a business. If you were already in business, they really didn't have very much to say to you. Do you think that that's a fair thing to say about them? Of my own personal opinion, I would agree. From your perspective, what things could and should be done to improve that seamless experience between business gateway and Scottish Enterprise? Is there anything that you could identify in particular? I don't think that I could identify anything in particular. Again, from my own experience of dealing business gateway, you want to get on the pipeline to Scottish Enterprise as fast as possible, because there is more support there and more support that is of a real value to you if you are setting up a business. Most companies, large or small, are initially looking for funding, be it funding as simple as helping you to write your business plan, going back to writing your business plan. It is costly to even take time to set up a business. Everybody says that they initially go to business gateway looking for some kind of support, and they just not get in that when they go to business gateway, so the faster they can get on the pipeline, the better. There needs to be more closer working in the same sort of ad. The Scottish Investment Bank is an amazing asset, but companies are not using it or not aware of it. They are not even getting that far down the line, because they are going to business gateway first when really something like that set up would be the best first point to call. To what extent do you think that there needs to be more work done to explain to businesses what is available? Again, from my first experience, it all seemed like a bit of a black box. The business gateway stuff was not relevant. Frankly, trying to penetrate and understand what was available from Sketch Enterprise was very difficult. Do you think that there is an issue there? There is a definite issue there. I have been at meetings with people from business gateway, and I have told them what they have available. There is a definite issue there. I would also like to move on to the area of productivity. Again, some of the evidence that the committee has heard previously is that there is a lot of focus at the high end in terms of the big picture macro policy, but not so much in terms of the detailed work at the low end. From your perspective, how would you understand the productivity challenge and what steps from it in a practical sense do you think businesses in your area could use and could welcome in terms of improving their productivity? That is a big question. How do you change the world? Again, I keep harping back to that, because it is the biggest success story that we have had in years as a developing young workforce. I think that something that the chambers would be able to have time to sit down and come up with something innovative that would fill in that gap would be the best process. What we have been setting up with the local enterprise side of things is a club-type feel. If you are a member of that club, we will walk you through the step by step process to export, and then you get to the stage where we feel that you are ready to export. That is when we pass you on to the relevant agencies, be it SDI or Scottish Enterprise. There definitely seems to be that requirement and that need. We have had good turnouts, our initial few workshops that we have had and really basic workshops that sit around the table with 10 other members and work on your business strategy together, that type of real handholding. I think that that is where the mentoring programme that also runs from Scottish chambers comes in. Businesses want to hear from other businesses. What does it mean to run a business? We had an event a couple of weeks ago on international, what it means to export to a certain country. We had a presentation from SDI, which was fantastic. I am looking at it thinking that that is amazing stuff that they have got there that businesses are not using. Then we have a business stand up and talk about what it means to export. It is a completely different story but a really good story. One of their biggest contracts that they won in China, it was not the selling to China or going to China. It was getting rid of the rubbish for something that they had to do. It was little things that you would not talk about in a normal sort of agency type scenario. You need to hear from real business. I am really interested by the fact that on several occasions you have linked questions about productivity and investment back to your work with developing the young workforce. Interesting enough, our agencies on those areas are not linked. We have SDS on the one hand and Scottish Enterprise. Do you think that our skills strategy needs to be more closely aligned with our investment strategy? Are there things that we could do to ensure that SDS is working more in lockstep with Scottish Enterprise and investment-led? I do, but the reason I keep linking back to developing young workforce is that model. It works and I really think that it will work long time. The model is that it is private sector led and it is locally led. Every area is different across Scotland and in our area and our chamber. I know a lot of our businesses like I know my family. They have come to me with things that they probably would not go to other people about. There is a local feel about it, so it is not necessarily saying that skills directly need to be linked, but it is the model of that project that works. Briefly, by way of clarification, in terms of Scottish Enterprise and business support and in terms of skill strategy, are you saying that you would like to see more private sector involvement and more private sector leadership in both of those areas? Thank you. Just to follow up on the productivity question, because it seems to be flavour not just of the month but flavour of the year. The UK industrial strategy announced yesterday that productivity was one of the key focus points. The adoption of new technology is one of the key areas that the industrial strategy is focused around. You mentioned millennial companies, almost by definition new companies coming to the market now or being established will be looking at new technology and e-commerce. Just in terms of the support available for new companies or existing companies looking to adopt e-commerce or new technology, what level of advice and skills are available within the enterprise agencies, Scottish Enterprise, HIE and business gateway when it comes to advising companies to adopt technology and move on towards e-commerce? That personally is not an area that I'm really that knowledgeable in. I'd have to be totally honest about, but from the meetings that I go to in the meeting that I was in down in London, is that nobody's moving fast enough in that area so that there is quite a big gap. We're not taking that seriously enough as to how fast that is actually moving. My general opinion is that the support on that side of things is pretty far behind and too slow again. It's moving so fast. Just going back to the more general question of support available from the enterprise agencies, Audit Scotland last year did a report on the enterprise agency. Some positive feedback, but overall, the overall conclusion was that it's a cluttered landscape, which I thought that you alluded to and some of the committee members have highlighted. Are there particular areas of the enterprise landscape that is working well in your view and what areas might need urgent attention if we are looking at improving the support that is available to businesses? Sorry, can you pin that down a little bit more on the enterprise side of things? Sure, I'm just wondering, in terms of identifying the support that is available, in other countries, for example, you will have a digital portal that is available to businesses either large or small. If they're looking for advice in exporting or investment or otherwise, that advice is available through one single door, one door of entry, whereas in Scotland it's a very cluttered landscape. Sometimes you just don't know where to begin that conversation or begin the analysis. What do you think would work as a business person? What do you think would work in terms of having that access and the advice easier for businesses to handle? You're all really going to laugh at me now, but we in our area have again worked on a portal for the developing and workforce, which has been looked at to use nationally because it is so easy to use. Again, we really stuck to a portal that very much looked again like a private sector business type sort of scenario, and it's very, very easy to use, but it's like a one-stop shop. It gives the information everywhere that you need in a very, very simple way to be broken it down into education, business, young people and parents, and each area has its own information that they would need and require. Something like that would be an absolutely huge asset in anything, be it technical export education. It's been a huge hit, and it gives a very, very clear picture and tidies up the cluttered landscape, which brings every partner to the table that's there, and there's huge interest in it nationally at the moment. Can I ask what's it called? Is it available to the public? It is available to the public now. We only launched it in September, so it's our developing, West Lothian's developing and workforce portal, but it has been looked at at a national level because we have taken time to do it, and we were pushed and pulled and told there was this and that, and I stood on the ground and I said something specifically that I wanted it to look like this and work like this, and we stood on our ground, and now that it's launched, everybody's been quite surprised and intrigued by it all, but I think it's just developing your workforce, West Lothian, WL, is the website. Is that without getting into technology, which you would lose me very quickly on, but is that interlinked into the other enterprise websites, so you have one door of entry and that's linked to existing? It's linked to STS, it goes through to my world of work, it goes through to marketplace, it goes through to the universities, it goes through to local college, it goes through to the job centre. We can actually advertise jobs on it, so companies are posting jobs, it advertises modern apprenticeships, it advertises foundation apprenticeships, you name it, anything to do with recruiting. It is the young workforce, but I think it would work for any workforce to be fair, and that's why I'd like to see it evolve over time is to, for any age of workforce, it doesn't have to be under 24 for it to work for you, but it links through to literally every agency that you would be required to use. Final question, if I may, and I think it's the question that I was meant to ask. Going back to West Lothian, examples of regional selective assistance being used in your area for job creation or new business creation, have there been good recent examples or other examples that you can point to? Not in particular, no. Main focus in our area has been definitely on developing young workforce recently, and that seems to be what's the highlight at the moment. I also noticed from your website that we employable young people at Asmus Plus project that you have. Can you maybe tell the committee a bit more about it? Yes, I applied for funding at Asmus Plus, and I've worked in partnership with Spain, Turkey, Italy, Romania and Greece. It's been a huge success and something that I'm going to look for funding to deliver as of next year. We had a week-long programme here where they brought young people from all over these countries to Scotland for a week, fortnight ago. It was an absolutely outstanding success. I couldn't believe how these young people from all these different countries and they were all from disadvantaged backgrounds, all bonded and got on with very simple confidence-building work and schemes, and educating them in a non-educational way, if you like. I know that they've got a group running already, and they're all friends still on a WhatsApp group from all over these countries. It's been an absolutely massive success. The only disappointing thing that I would say on the back of that is that when these projects run, there's nothing supporting that. I had five young people from Scottish People involved in the project, and they were very far from the pipeline of any kind of positive destination. Young people, and I would say that it's changed them in a week, but what do I do with them now? There's no funding to continue their development. I struggle to get any agency to... I find these five young people myself, because no agency would send me five people in Scotland. I really struggle to get five young people in Scotland, because they won't do anything that's not funded or fits into their programme. I'm disappointed that there's no obvious funding at the moment, which will continue the programme to run, but it was a huge asset. Just in terms of the future of the programme, it lends itself as an erasmus project towards a kind of various concerns and considerations regarding Brexit. More generally, what are the views and opinions of your members as regards to the UK withdrawing from the European Union? Is it something that's brought up regularly, or is it not something that you tend to hear too much about? I would say that it's not talked about enough. There's obviously concerns, and in RA, our biggest concern is the workforce. A majority of our workforce are EU nationals, because a lot of manufacturing are in our area, so that is their biggest concern. Our biggest concern as a chamber and our work with Ireland recently has been that there's a little bit of butter in their head in the sand going on with businesses, and it's going to be honest very quickly. We are looking at running some workshops as of the new year on preparation for Brexit, whether it's hard or soft. There are basic housekeeping rules that we can put in place that would have a business ready for the worst-case scenario. We need to be talking a lot more about what the possibilities are. I sit with a lot of different agencies, Food and Drink, Rotolers Association, and they all have very different points of view and issues that are going to arise. A lot of which, when you speak to them, you think, I never even thought about that. It's very common. I've found in conversations about Brexit that there are always areas that one hasn't considered, and when one does, it's eye-watering complexity and implications. Do you see any positives from the UK leaving the European Union? I do. I think more UK trade, particular products that we're buying out with local. For example, butter. We buy most of our butter from Ireland. That might be that that's then purchased within this country, so there are positives on that side of things. However, the biggest worry is the international workforce. On balance, is it something that you would say is a positive or a negative? On balance, that would have been my personal opinion on both. That's a politician's answer. I do personally see both. I think that long term it could be a good thing. It's a final question, but because there is still some element of uncertainty regarding the future status of non-UK EU nationals, is that something that you feel is impacting upon EU nationals within West Lothian in a sense that they're perhaps more minded to relocate to other parts of the European Union? It was a drop-off of the number of EU nationals, particularly, for example, in health and social care. It's a significant, highly significant reduction in the number of non-UK EU nurses registering in the UK. Is that something that you would experience in other sectors? Again, some companies are saying to us that they're leaving, they're moving to Ireland, and others are saying that they've seen no difference at all. I hope most are hanging on hoping that it's not going to be an issue long term. Do you think that there's another element, as you said, with businesses of head and sand? I would say yes, at the moment. There's a lot more awareness in Ireland of it, there's a lot more concerned and doing a lot more about it to prepare and think about it. May I ask a question just about the Scottish Investment Bank? Are you aware of any of the businesses in West Lothian applying for money from the Scottish Investment Bank? I'm not, but I have been promoting it on a regular basis because I went myself to meet with them to see what the process was, and I thought that the process was very good. As I said, some sort of set-up like that would be more of more use, I would say, than the initial business gateway set-up, because when I went to meet the agent there, they were much more hands-on to help you to prepare your business plan and what you actually needed to do and work with you on that plan. I have promoted it many times to our members. The take-up is probably quite slow, though. It's still wary. Do you have any idea why the take-up is so slow, if the process, as you say, is better or helpful? I think that the history of working with these agencies in the past has been time-consuming and cumbersome. It's fear of the past of what it's like working with these agencies, which can be a long, slow, costly process. I think that Andy Wightman wanted to come in with a follow-up on that. Yes, I just noted that the Scottish Investment Bank has introduced this peer-to-peer lending platform, Lending Crowd. You described earlier about the cumbersome process of having to prepare business plans and the rest, which is rather out of date. Obviously, peer-to-peer lending is right up there. The risks are very much more those risks identified by the peers rather than by some third party. Do you see potential in that? Is that something that you've had any engagement with? I haven't had a lot of engagement, but I again thought that as a big asset. I think something like that is a big improvement. As I said, I only had an hour meeting with the gentleman, but I was quite impressed when I went to see him that the different avenues of lending were very vague. They said that once they looked at what they were doing and what they were looking for, they would then partner in the right direction, which I really liked. However, they need to be more aware of us to businesses and it's just going to take time, but businesses probably need to be shown what's actually available and out there. More old-fashioned business branding and marketing would be good. Okay, thank you. So a bit of the new and a bit of the old then. Moving on then to John Mason. Thank you, convener. As you probably gathered, we're looking both at wider economic performance and we're also looking at this year's budget and so on. Starting probably with the latter, the economic performance side and looking at the area of fair work and all that's included in there, living wages, workforce balance, workforce engagement, all that kind of stuff. Would you say for your companies and for the chambers that these are important issues or really are businesses more focused just on what's the bottom line is making a profit, these things are less important? How do you feel that all works? I would say they're very for the fair work side of things, but some of the feedback that I got from companies was that the fair work is important to them, but there also has to be more awareness that there needs to be more support for companies and not always taking from companies. There needs to be support in job and wealth creation so that they can then offer the fair work environment, but if the pressure is always on them with increased taxes and increased hoops to jump through, it doesn't make their life. It's just another add-on to what is already a difficult landscape for them. Is there something specific that we could do to help them with the fair work agenda? There are things like the Scottish Business Pledge and so on, or is that just seen as another hoop? I have to say that I haven't heard a lot of companies mention that since it was launched. It's more of the long game. The companies want to do good by their employees, but if it's made difficult for them, as I said at the other end, that there's always continuous added legislation for them to have to deal with, then it does slip down the rank of importance of running their business. That's basically the feedback that I've been getting from them. If we take groups that have traditionally been disadvantaged or at least not seen so much, are you seeing more women coming through running businesses, more ethnic minority people running businesses, more disabled people running businesses? Is there any fuel for that at all? There's definitely a fuel for that. I've spoken to several companies that are setting up particular women back-to-work programmes. There's more companies letting people work from home. In the day and age of IT, there's no reason that a lot of people can't work in their own home with Skype and all the technology that's there, so more companies are looking at that sort of type of setup and flexible working time. There's definitely a change in that environment so that they can work more closely with those types of people. I mean, we've had, I think, some evidence that, you know, bigger companies, they've got policies and they've just got a bit more kind of ability to move things around. Smaller businesses can find it quite hard to maybe take on a disabled employee or, you know, and other things like that. Do you think there is a difference between bigger and smaller companies or...? There would be and there wouldn't be. I mean, obviously, it's easier for a larger company to take, but I wouldn't say there was a big divide. I would say that smaller companies are trying just as hard and probably more likely to be offering the work from home environment and these types of different ways of running a company. Smaller companies have to adapt and change to fit into the environment. The environment these days is that skills are very hard to find, so you need to tap into every market to look into it. There's certainly a lot more awareness raising of all these different areas coming to the table than I've seen before, so companies are a lot more aware of the workforce that's out there available to them. And then moving specifically back to the kind of budget and Scottish Enterprise, which we're looking at, I mean, is it your feeling, and I don't know if you might be picked that up or maybe you don't, that for these issues are important issues for Scottish Enterprise? I mean, are they encouraging companies, do you think, to have a more balanced workforce, make sure they pay a living wage, these kind of things? I'd have to say it, I wouldn't know. That's a question. That's a question, yeah. Oh, yeah. Okay, thanks so much. I've got something I'm aware of. All right. I think Andy Wightman had questions. He wanted to come back to you on a slightly different subject. To do? I think I've covered what I wanted to come back on. I thought you said you did, but maybe everything was covered by others in that case. Did Daniel Johnson have something for other you wanted to ask? He does a nice shade of Andy. Are there any other committee members who wish to ask anything further at this stage? Dean Lockhart? Jamie Halcro Johnston, I don't think you've had an opportunity yet. I haven't. Thank you very much, and apologies for coming late. I think you've hit every bit of roadworks I could on the way down from Aberdeen. Apologies for not being here from the start. I just wanted to ask one of the things that we discussed when we were on the way day in Livingston was you talked about, and apologies if it's been covered as well, the importance of engagement with businesses and with schools and colleges and the like. I wondered whether there's enough of that going on and how we can encourage that. I think one of the issues that was raised was that almost teachers need to come into businesses to get a better idea in terms of career guidance. How important that was at bringing through the right skills into a business and finding the right skills out with company? Yes, as I've mentioned to everybody several times today, developing a workforce has been pushing that forward and it has been a huge success. We have started in our area the work experience where we take the teachers and the college lecturers out into business for work experience, not just the young people. So there's been a couple of programmes run already, but that's going to be sort of the norm in our area and running on a regular basis. I think the last day out they had, they had 40 teachers, so there was a big take-up on it all, so nobody in school. It's been a big success so far that we've piloted it. And there haven't been reservations from either the teachers or from the companies that you've been able to find? At the start, teachers probably were concerned about time, they have a lot on their plate to deal with as it is, but I think now they're seeing that the assets behind it are having a way the time, if you like. Business, we've never struggled with engagement from business on this topic at all and I would say it's only growing and improving on a daily basis. Do you know, I know it's not your area, but do you know of other chambers that do it, say up in the Highlands and Islands area? There are several other chambers that run the developing a workforce in that area and they all have a similar sort of stream going on within them. Dean Lockhart Thank you. We've discussed a lot about the enterprise advice available and we touched a bit about capital and funding available. You mentioned the Scottish Investment Bank and I've heard a lot of good feedback about the co-investment programme, bringing together some public sector funding, more importantly private sector funding and expertise. Do you have good examples of that co-investment funding with your members or otherwise? As I said earlier, no, but I think that it's a huge asset and something that we need to be pushing forward more so that our companies are more aware of its actual existence in the first place. I would like to see that more on offer straight in it, as I said, business gateway level and more promotion. I would think that most businesses don't even know it's there. Okay, and again another availability of capital. Last year the Scottish growth scheme was announced as a potentially £500 million contribution to the Scottish economy. Have any of your members or any other businesses that you have dealt with, have they been able to access or have systems under the growth scheme? Not aware of it, no. All right, well, if there are no further questions from committee members, thank you very much for coming in today and I hope you found that a useful session as we have. Thank you very much. Okay, I'll suspend the session and wait for the gallery to clear. Thank you very much.